ShaunR Posted January 19, 2013 Report Share Posted January 19, 2013 5 BTC competition - LabVIEW app to get address from private key A private key in the context of Bitcoin is a secret number that allows bitcoins to be spent. Every Bitcoin address has a matching private key, which is saved in the wallet file of the person who owns the balance. The private key is mathematically related to the Bitcoin address, and is designed so that the Bitcoin address can be calculated from the private key, but importantly, the same cannot be done in reverse. Source Quote Link to comment
lordexod Posted January 19, 2013 Report Share Posted January 19, 2013 Perhaps you mean this: bitcoinaddress = base58encode(ripemd160(sha256(secp256k1(privatekey)))). Quote Link to comment
ShaunR Posted January 20, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2013 (edited) Perhaps you mean this: bitcoinaddress = base58encode(ripemd160(sha256(secp256k1(privatekey)))).Indeed. So you only have to write a LV implementation of ripemd160, secp256k1 and a base 58 encoder and you can claim some bitcoins Edited January 20, 2013 by ShaunR 1 Quote Link to comment
lordexod Posted January 22, 2013 Report Share Posted January 22, 2013 There are no takers for 5 BTC? Quote Link to comment
Rolf Kalbermatter Posted January 23, 2013 Report Share Posted January 23, 2013 There are no takers for 5 BTC? Why do you ask? The right way for a real programmer would be to start working on it not to ask if someone will do it! Quote Link to comment
ShaunR Posted January 24, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 There are no takers for 5 BTC? I thought you would have finished it by now Quote Link to comment
Rolf Kalbermatter Posted January 24, 2013 Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 To be honest, I'm not sure about my position to Bitcoin itself. I tried to understand what it was about by visiting the forum there, but don't really got a clear picture. From some of the remarks there, it seems to be used by some folks in somewhat questionable ways. But then anything that represents some value in some form, even virtual currency or items in online games, is quickly attracting some folks who have more than questionable intent. So that alone is certainly not a criterium if the the idea of Bitcoin could be considered legitimate. However it seems to me some form of online virtual currency that only exists by the gratitude of people believing that it represents some value. That in itself is an interesting concept and in fact not so much different than even our official currencies we pay with all the time, and probably even more real than derivatives on stock exchange markets. However who controls the creation of that value? In other words how are Bitcoins created? And I'm not so much interested in the technical details here as is already mentioned in this thread by the formula, than the process and procedure that controls the creation. If it could be created by anyone in any number it would obviously loose all value. 1 Quote Link to comment
Jordan Kuehn Posted January 24, 2013 Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 From my (limited) understanding, bitcoins are created by solving the formula to a specific degree of accuracy. This threshold is adjusted to maintain a certain rate of bitcoin creation which will eventually taper off to 0 by also adjusting the reward for mining down to 0. Much of my knowledge can be summarized the the following two links. Sure there are some illicit uses, but it is interesting to think about an online currency that is not tied to any government.https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ http://slacktory.com/2011/08/bitcoin-mining-fun-loss/ Quote Link to comment
ShaunR Posted January 24, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 To be honest, I'm not sure about my position to Bitcoin itself. I tried to understand what it was about by visiting the forum there, but don't really got a clear picture. From some of the remarks there, it seems to be used by some folks in somewhat questionable ways. But then anything that represents some value in some form, even virtual currency or items in online games, is quickly attracting some folks who have more than questionable intent. So that alone is certainly not a criterium if the the idea of Bitcoin could be considered legitimate. However it seems to me some form of online virtual currency that only exists by the gratitude of people believing that it represents some value. That in itself is an interesting concept and in fact not so much different than even our official currencies we pay with all the time, and probably even more real than derivatives on stock exchange markets. However who controls the creation of that value? In other words how are Bitcoins created? And I'm not so much interested in the technical details here as is already mentioned in this thread by the formula, than the process and procedure that controls the creation. If it could be created by anyone in any number it would obviously loose all value. Well. Leaving aside the economic arguments for now..... The big thing about bitcoin is there is no centralised accountancy, it is almost an instantaneous peer-to-peer transfer. And it is extremely hard to trace (anonymity). A few years ago you might argue that the latter was only a benefit to criminals. With current events (SOPA, Snoopers Charter et. al.) many ordinary folk feel that they need to protect their privacy. Many economies are also being sucked dry by corporate interests and other monetary systems have arisen to combat this so people are looking for alternative strategies. Bitcoins are gaining popularity mainly because of these two points and you could say it's filling a need at the right time. Bitcoins obtain their "value" from scarcity (limited maximum number of 21 x 10^6) and by the energy consumed in generating them (electricity to run a bitcoin miner). There are a couple of bitcoin "exchanges" where you can convert bitcoins to fiat which is probably a more understandable, although flawed, measure of value (as of writing 1 bitcoin~= 14 Euros). ...... But on to the interesting stuff ...... Bitcoins are "mined" (that's the terminology) just as resources (like gold) are. Instead of digging a hole, however, a computationally expensive algorithm (a hash) is used by a Bitcoin Miner. This is synonymous with password "cracking" in computational terms, but the intent is quite different. Whilst in the early days you could mine with a fairly low spec PC. The "difficulty" has progressed to the point where you now need dedicated hardware-usually racks of GPUs in the 10s of Giga-hashes per second. (This has led to an argument that early adopters gain a significant wealth advantage, but let's stick to the interesting stuff ) The design of the bitcoin system is such that there is a maximum of 21 million that can ever be created (currently there are approximately 10M in circulation). A bitcoin itself is just a history of transactions (the block chain) from the "base" bitcoin block and the difficulty in "cracking" the hash changes in relation to the rate at which bitcoins are mined. (I should also point out that bitcoins are not mined singularly, but in batches). The number of coins in the batch (currently 50 at this time) also reduces as more bitcoins are mined meaning that the cost/BC (electricity consumed) increases with more bitcoins in circulation. You can get a more concise overview here. Suffice to say. On the surface it looks fairly straightforward (just money, right?) but the deeper you go, the more you realise just how much thought has gone into the system and how technically elegant it is (and not a banker in sight!). I can see a couple of issues that need to be resolved (bitcoins can be destroyed but not recreated and defence against a party taking over 50% of the network). But it does look very promising and certainly has gained the attention of the authorities. 1 Quote Link to comment
ShaunR Posted March 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2013 (edited) Well. The Bitcoin system has had its first very public robustness test in terms of the protocol/system. Good community response (developers and traders) to the issue which was resolved quickly. Edited March 12, 2013 by ShaunR Quote Link to comment
ShaunR Posted March 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2014 5 BTC competition - LabVIEW app to get address from private key Source After just over a year, someone has claimed the first prize. The original proposer for the competition is in a bit of a quandary . When the competition was set 5 btc was worth about $75. Now they are worth about $3000 The deadline was set for when 5 working solutions were submitted, however, there has been only one and the OP has now closed the contest. Kudos to the guy who had to write native labview code to handle big numbers and eliptic curve multiplication, which is no mean feat.. Quote Link to comment
mje Posted March 13, 2014 Report Share Posted March 13, 2014 I'm snickering over the fact that you can mark your own post as the "best answer" to your own topic. Quote Link to comment
ShaunR Posted March 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2014 I'm snickering over the fact that you can mark your own post as the "best answer" to your own topic. Yes. I should do the rest of my posts (unfortunately I have only started about 3 topics ..... ever ) Just saves people reading the entire thread as it has run its course and the link contains the solution if they want to get the code.. Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.